Yesterday’s paper carried another story of housing development plans for Flagstaff. (Link: Flagstaff housing plans surge.) I attended a meeting last week with the City of Flagstaff’s chief planner who said he expects about 200 building permits for single-family homes to be issued in 2014. That’s a far cry from the impression you might get from reading the newspaper and that number is not going to relieve the inventory crunch the Flagstaff homes market is currently experiencing.
One difference, of course, is between development plans and the approval process for large scale housing developments, and the issuance of building permits to construct homes on individual lots in those developments, which is likely to be some years down the road and based upon actual demand. Currently, the last homes are being built (based on current building permits) in Ponderosa Trails, which was first developed beginning in 1999, and home building is really just in full swing in Presidio, development plans for which were filed in 2005.
The other difference is that the Arizona Daily Sun is talking about commercial and multi-family (apartment) dwellings as well as single-family homes. We do need more apartment dwellings, and they are coming on line quickly. That won’t have much impact on the single-family and townhome markets, about which most of our clients are concerned.
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